The delivery of data services to customer premises, such as a residence or business, has typically been provided by one or more networks, such as the telephone network or cable network. Typically, these networks are provided in an uncoordinated manner such that the telephone network does not know of the existence of the cable network and the cable network does not know of the existence of the telephone network. In fact, these different network technologies are often viewed as competing and network services companies, such as cable operators or telephone companies, have expended considerable effort on converging different types of data delivery onto a single network. Thus, for example, cable networks may provide analog and digital video data and broadband data over a cable network. This convergence has even extended to providing voice services utilizing voice over IP (VOIP) using a broadband cable connection.
Some efforts have been made to use different communications technologies in an integrated manner. For example, some cable and satellite set-top boxes have an analog dial-up connection that is used to do pay per-view billing and program set-up. Furthermore, efforts have been made to use multiple networks for improved performance. For example, Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL) architects (and Integrated Service Digital Network (ISDN) system designers before them) use a mechanism called bonding, which combines two DSL circuits to provide increased bandwidth for a single customer. Furthermore, personal video recorders, such as TiVo™, may receive video signals from a number of different sources, such as satellite or a cable television network, and receive guide data over a network connection to the Internet or a dial-up connection over a phone line. Also, U.S. Pat. No. 6,002,722 describes a multimode digital modem where voice-band (e.g., V.34), DSL, cable, terrestrial and other wireless, and/or satellite modems are implemented simultaneously by the same digital signal processor (DSP) device.